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THE PRISON SHIPS 
AND OTHER POEMS 



THE PRISON SHIPS 

AND OTHER POEMS 



BY 

THOMAS WALSH 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1909 



Copyright, 1909 
Sherman, French <S^' Company 






©GI.A2517SS 



Certain numbers in the present collection 
are reprinted through the courtesy of the 
Editors of Ainslee's, The Atlantic, The 
Ave Maria, The Bookman, The Century, 
The Cosmopolitan, The Critic, Every- 
body's, The Forum, Harper's, The Inde- 
pendent, Lippincott's, The Messenger, 
Munsey's, The Reader, The Smart Set, 
and Scribner's Magazine. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE PRISON SHIPS 13 

AD ASTRA 20 

THE BLIND 21 

EXPIATION 23 

ENDLESS SPRING 23 

JOHN MILTON 24 

SEAGULLS IN NEW YORK HARBOR ... 25 

DIVINATION 27 

THE EPITAPH OF A BUTTERFLY .... 28 

AT NAZARETH 29 

SNOW FUGUE 31 

INVOCATION OF THE BUTTERFLIES . . 32 

ON LAKE TRASIMENO 33 

THE HILL PEOPLE 35 

THE HEART OF THE ROSE 36 

DAYBREAK 37 

CHARLES WARREN STODDARD .... 38 

LITTLE PATHWAYS 39 

VIGILIA 41 

BLACK JOHN'S WAY 42 

WHERE DREAMS GO BY 43 

WORLD RUNES 44 

GETTYSBURG 46 

DIS PLACIDIS 48 

ON A NIGHTINGALE AT AMALFI .... 49 

FROM AVIGNON TO TARASCON 50 

ON THE VERANDA 52 



PAGE 

ALHAMBRA SONG 53 

IN A FRIEND'S GUIDE-BOOK 54 

LARGESSES 55 

ON A GATE-STONE AT GRANADA .... 56 

THE CHANOINESSE 59 

THE UHLAN 61 

PENITENTS 62 

IN MEMORY'S GARDEN 64 

SONGS 65 

STAR-TRYSTS 66 

IN THE TWILIGHT OP LOVE 67 

THE VOICE 68 

THE HAIL 70 

DREAM ELOQUENCE 71 

A SIGH FROM ALHAMBRA 72 

IN THE HOUSE OF AUGUSTUS 73 

IN THE CLOISTER OF SAN JUAN .... 77 

THE LEVANTINE 80 

AFTERGLOW 81 

THE HOURS 82 

RUSSIAN SPRINGSONG AFTER MINAIEV . 84 

ON THE PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ROMB . . 85 

MATINS 87 

GROVER CLEVELAND 88 

WITH THE SHEPHERDS 89 

NO SPRING TILL NOW 91 

A GARDEN PRAYER 93 

THE NOEL OF ST. ELOI 97 

NIGHT IN THE SUBURBS 99 

RAVELLO 101 



PAGE 

SEVILLANA 104 

TO FRANCIS THOMSON 106 

THE CATHEDRAL, BURGOS,1906 107 

THE TARDY SPRING 109 

THE POOL OF THE HAZELS 110 

NOEL OF STE. ANNE DE CHICOUTIMI, 

QUEBEC Ill 

A PANEL AFTER TURNER 113 

TO AN ENGLISH SETTER 114 

HOW LIKE THE ROSE 115 



AD MATREM 

CATHERINE FARRELL WALSH 

IN DEDICATION 



THE PRISON SHIPS 

ODE READ AT THE DEDICATORY EXERCISES OP THE 

PRISON-SHIP martyrs' MONUMENT ON FORT 

GREENE, WASHINGTON PARK, BROOKLYN, 

NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 14, 1908. 

NOT here the frenzied onslaught — here no 
roar 
Of victory — no raucous cry of hate 
From the red surge of war ; 
Here crowd no Cassar's myrmidons of state 
Lest for some hasty-fading laurels he be late 
And night annul his place ; 
But solemn is the tread of feet that come 
Around this hallowed mount — with drum 
Concordant — with the clarion 
Of youthful hearts that throb for deeds sub- 
lime — 
Here where no stain can e'er deface 
This columned beauty out of Parthenon, — 
This glory surging pure beyond the clouds of 
Time. 

Here on our fortress hill 

Where Freedom's gathering vanguards took 

their stand, 
O sacred relics ! — how serene ye lay, 
How patient for this day 
Whose rites we now fulfill ! 

[ 13 ] 



Thousands of dusks and dawns have trembled on 

These portals of your tomb ; 

Ye heard the tread of discord shake the land, 

The trumpetings of doom ; — 

Yea, through your sleep ye knew the orphan's 

cry, 
The broken hearts' far clamoring, 
And the pale heroes plucking deathless wreaths 
From fields o'ershadowed by the buzzard's wing ! 
Oh, in what direful school 
Learned ye the iron rigor of the mind 
Your memory bequeaths? 
Was it in plague and famine ye did find 
Such right divine to rule — 
Such hope in God and man — that double stay 
Of commonwealths to-day? 
For here, the sponsors for all ages, 
Ye gave as solemn gages 
Not blood alone 
But very flesh and bone ! 

Nor pledged ye only for the strong and brave. 
But for the generations yet unborn 
By every strand remote that greets the morn. 
For the pale despot shackled to his throne 
As for the serf and slave. 
O stalworth dreamers in the dust. 
That God who took your young hearts' trust, 
Your pangs, the issue of your patriot cause. 
Still sways the stars and souls of men 

[14 ] 



With th' ancient seals and laws ; 

Nor did He turn and mock your anguish when 

Ye cried His password through eternity 

And died in fetters so ye might be free. 

O martyrdom of hope ! — to lie 

In youth and strength — and die 

'Mid rotting hulks that once by every sea 

And star swung carelessly — 

To die becalmed in war's black hell, 

Where in the noon's wide blaze your hearts could 

soar 
With gull and eagle by each cherished shore 
Of home — where ye had sworn to dwell 
The fathers of the free. 
Doom like to this the Lydian victim bore 
Who clutched at feasts divine — only to starve 

the more. 
Well might the blue skies and the breeze 
Which once perchance swept Delphi o'er, 
Well might the star-eyes question : — " What are 

these 
Heaped holocausts on Freedom's shrine? 
Not even the dullard ox unto our altars led 
Of old, but walked 'mid reverent throng 
Anoint and garlanded ! 
What rite of hate or scorn of law divine 
Strikes down its victims here 
With not a funeral song 
Nor poor libation of a tear.*^ " 

[ IS ] 



To-day give answer — ye, who 'mid the battle's 

roar 
Have known the rapture of a patriot's death, — 
Ye, who have seen the aureole trembling o'er 
Your brows as anguish clutched at Life's fond 

breath, — 
Blessed and radiant now ! — look down 
In consecration of the solemn deed 
Which here commemorates this iron breed 
Of martyrs nameless in the clay 
As the true heroes of our newer day — 
World-heroes — patterned not on king and 

demi-god 
Of charioted splendor or of crown 
Blood-crusted — but on toilers in the sod. 
On reapers of the sea, on lovers of mankind, 
Whose bruised shoulders bear 
The lumbering wain of progress — all who share 
The crust and sorrows of our mortal lot — 
Lamps of the soul The Christ hath left behind 
To light the path whereon He faltered not. 

Yea, now the boom of guns. 
The scarlet bugles, faint from off the world ! 
Lo, o'er the loftier brows of man, unfurled 
The purer banners of the dawning suns ! 
Banners of God in godlike minds — of hope — 
Of faith, to daunt the crafty hordes of greed, 
The venomed remnant of the dragon's seed 

[ 16] 



Along the gutters of the world ! No more men 

grope 
Up Life's black chasms — but free they swing 

along 
Their spacious levels in the noon's full flow'r 
And strike to earth the barricades of wrong. 
They have torn down the tyrants of an hour, — 
Think not that they shall hear the deeps of 

shame 
Foredoom them likewise with the despot's name ; 
Nor doubt this glorious vessel of our state, 
This visioned bark, whereof in martyr dreams 
From death's grim hulks they caught the hal- 
yard gleams, — 
No feud can seize it, nor the grip of hate 
Turn back its prow into the slime 
For scorn to overwhelm 
With name so cursed on the lips of Time 
As " prison-ship " for men who would be free ! 

High God, Thy hand was on another helm 

When every tide and breeze 

Brought the hope-lighted argosies 

From out the ports of hunger and of wrong ! 

And Thou alone hast number kept 

Of that indomitable throng 

Who gained this harbor portal, 

From out their house of bondage crept 

And sought the north, the south, the west, — 

[ n ] 



Armies of thrift and faith with hearts that 

blessed 
These graves immortal! 

To-day from far their Freedom-lighted brows 
Turn hither musing on their happy prows 
That met the tides of sacred waters here 
And touched a lustral shore whose shrines unta 

the skies uprear. 
And ye, O sailors faring buoyant forth, 
Bear ye the tidings of this joy-swept main 
Where round the coasts of Celt or Dane 
Ye brave the sleet-mouthed north 
Or track the moon on some Sicilian wave 
Or lonely cape of Spain ; 
Take ye the story of these comrades true 
Whose prison hulks sank here 
Where now such tides of men are poured 
As never surged o'er crag or fiord 
To stay the gulls with fear — 
Who yet such quest of glory knew 
As never Argonaut of old 
Seeking the shores of gold — 
As never knight from wound and vigil pale 
Tracing o'er sunset worlds his Holy Graal ! 

And lo ! — to all the seas a pharos set 

In sign memorial! Through the glooms of 

Time 
'Twill teach a sacrifice of self, sublime 

[18 ] 



O'er lash of storms as through corroding cahns. 

Nor e'er alone shall shine 

Its love-bright parapet ; 

But every star shall bring a golden alms ; — 

The seething harbor line 

Glow 'neath its star-fed hives, its swing and flare 

Of Bridges ; — while with pilgrim lamps from 

sea 
Shall grope the dreadnought fleets ; — while end- 
less prayer 
Of dawns and sunsets floods the faces far 
Uplifted, tear-stained, to this Martyr shrine, — 
Whose sister torch shall greet what Liberty 
Holds back to God, — earth's brightest answer- 
ing star. 



[ 19] 



AD ASTRA 

LOVE, jou are late, — 
Yea, while the rose leaves fall 
In showers against the moonlit garden-wall, 
My firm hand bars the gate. 
The nightingale 

Has worn himself with pleading; 
The fountains' silvered tears are interceding, 
But what is their avail? 

Love, you are too late. 

Long stood the postern wide 

With all my morning-glories twined ; inside 
Bird called to bird for mate. 
Noon and the sun, — 

The loves of bees and flow'rs ; 

With folded hands unclaimed I marked the 
hours 
That saw my youth undone. 

Then evening star 

And coming of the moon ! 

Ah, not too soon, my soul, ah, not too soon 
Broke their soft grace afar ! 
All consecrate, 

I chose my white path there. 

And took the withered roses from my hair. 
Love, you are too late, — too late ! 

[ 20 ] 



THE BLIND 

AT midnight, through my dream, the signals 
dread 
From star to star, brought word the sun was 

dead. 
It seemed as though' entire creation heard 
Yet gave no answer, — neither call of bird 
Nor low of cattle ; but the townsfolk crept 
In silence to their roof-tops. No man slept. 
But merchant, bondman, prince and scribe and 

priest, 
Their faces haggard, searched the fateful East. 
Down from the hillsides to the city gates 
No market wains came rumbling with their 

freights ; 
No sentry's voice along the citadel 
Announced the hour ; no matin peal or knell 
From dome or campanile; not a sail 
Stirred in the harbor offing ! Then a wail 
Despairing swept across the roofs, a sigh 
O'er land and sea, as slowly on the sky 
The sun's black bulk between the stars uprose — 
One sigh of astral grief, and at its close 
Came silence once again more terrible ! 
'Twas then, methought, a new-born infant cried ; 
And where the gates stood open gaunt and wide 
A blind man crouched and stretched his empty 

palms 
Into the darkness and moaned, " Alms ! Alms ! " 
[ 21 1 



EXPIATION 

EARTH o'er her plains and mountains has 
unrolled 
A royal carpet all of red and gold 
Whereon November on his exiled way 
Like some doomed sultan may bow down and 
pray. 



[28] 



ENDLESS SPRING 

THERE comes a whisper through my heart 
As night o'ertakes me on my way 
Where I would hold my cares apart 

And mourn the long autumnal day ; 
The paths I love await the snows, 

The boughs are bare of song and wing, 
Yet through my heart the whisper goes 

That somewhere — somewhere there is spring. 

I care not whether near or far, — 

I know through other lands it goes 
With drift of blossom, glint of star. 

And old-time message of the rose. 
I cannot ask that it should stay 

Lest hearts afar lack comforting ; 
Enough for me to know alway 

That somewhere — somewhere there is spring. 

Beloved — O where'er you be 

For whom my thoughts are caroling — 
O answer, heart to heart, with me 

That somewhere — somewhere there is spring. 



[ «8] 



JOHN MILTON 

1608 DECEMBEtt 1908 

WHAT other tread is on Oljmpus now — 
O vacant winds — O hollow valleys where 
Of yore the Graces roved! What sightless 
stare 
Now awes the peaks that hailed blind Homer's 

brow ! — 
" Great Pan is dead " — so every crag and 
bough 
Bemoaned ; — " Zeus, vanished from his high 

repair — 
Apollo's darts unstrung ! " — What foot hath 
there 
Dispersed that avalanche of gods — but thou 

Who strode concurrent with the angel throng 
Of Sinai and of Tabor — as the choirs 
Of Bethlehem hill caught up the scattered 
lyres 
And heaven's Far-Darting bow was made a 
Cross. 
O Milton, still doth thine epochal song 
Sound from life's peaks upon the vales of 
dross. 



[24 ] 



SEAGULLS IN NEW YORK HARBOR 

WINGS of the north that speak of Viking 
days, 
What winter madness yearly brings you here 
To toss and scream upon the harbor ways 

Between the prows that whiten far and near! 

Yon seething heights and canons but deride 
The crags that nursed you in the isle'd sea ; 

Yon roar of human traffic speaks of tide 
More terrible than theirs and bids you flee. 

For soon no eye shall mark you, and the day 
Be swiftly heaped into the furnace west, 

That tranquil hour your northern sisters stay 
Their briny flights and wait you at the nest. 

Then through the vasty reaches of the night 
Shall vice and virtue range in ancient game 

Upon one living checkerboard of light ; 
Where bridges raise their diadems of flame. 

Yea, never — waking in their midnight caves — 
Your kindred find such splendor on the seas 

When the white hermit, North, his pennons 
waves ; 
Yea, never dream of witcheries like these. 



[ 25 ] 



Think you that at the dawn the fiery eyes 

Which guard yon outposts shall be closed in 
sleep ? 

That mid yon realm of gathering shadows lies 
Some eyrie like your old ones on the deep ? 

Nay, — though the midnight hush the sullen 
streams 

That gloat like misers o'er the rests of light, 
Think not to find your haven here for dreams, — 

But to the sea, O winter wings, take flight. 



[26] 



DIVINATION 

WHAT glory waits upon the rose 
Where Hght of more than earth delays? 

Some lineage of heaven betrays 
Itself, I know, in tint and pose. 
A starlight through the day it throws. 

Yea, all my nights are faint to praise 
What glory waits upon the rose. 
The spells I seek no wizard knows. 

No Mage for all his parchment says, — 

But, Sweetheart, something in thy gaze 
And something on thy lips disclose 
What glory waits upon the rose. 



[ 27] 



THE EPITAPH OF A BUTTERFLY 

AS one by one she saw the leaves of red 
And yellow wafted slowly to the ground, 
Hope buoyed her heavy wings of flame and said 
That 'mong them still some comrade might be 
found. 

But when o'er all the autumn hills a pall 
Of gold was drawn before her glazing eye, 

Yon mirrored pool made ready for her fall 
A grave as lovely as her native sky. 



[ 28] 



AT NAZARETH 

BEYOND the blackened embers of the earth 
The west withdraws the sinking flames of 
day; 
So ends the seventh annual of My birth — 
And see — a star, to taunt our brazier 
gray !— 
Dost thou remember how at hours like these — 

Nay, mother, I was not too young to know — 
Thou wouldst go meekly down upon thy knees 

And opening wide our rustic coffer, show 
The Magi's offerings fondly treasured there: — 

The golden casket with its store of stones 
And coins and amulets and ciphers rare ; 

The incense lamps, the myrrh's bejeweled 
cones 
With wondrous hieroglyphs engraven o'er. 

These wouldst thou lift into My baby hands 
Until My breast and arms could hold no more ; 
Then wouldst thou pour the precious incense 
sands 
Upon our little fire and all the room 

Grew white with clouds of perfume undefiled ; 
Then wouldst prostrate thyself amid the gloom. 

Sweet mother, all alone before thy Child. 
To-night hast thou no incense for thy Son ? — 



[ 29] 



The night wind finds our brazier black as 
death? — 
Nay, — do not kneel — here, here My breast 

upon. 
The stars shall show the vapor of thy breath. 



[ 30 ] 



SNOW FUGUE 

THE moon, the mouldering moon, is out 
Amid the ashes of the years. 
Ere with his straggling hosts in rout 
Day from his Moscow disappears. 

And hark ! the blasts' white finger beat 
The mountain drums in long accord 

Out where the cypresses entreat — 

Green tongues that ceaseless praise the Lord. 

O Night that falls upon the earth, — 
Be gracious unto them who weep ! 

Soothe thou the pangs of death and birth. 
And flood embittered hearts with sleep ! 



C 31 ] 



INVOCATION OF THE BUTTERFLIES 

PUEBLO INDIAN SONG 

BUTTERFLIES! — 
Butterflies of daybreak glancing 
O'er the yellow fields and blue, — 
White wing, — red wing, — gold wing, — glanc- 
ing 
In the sun motes, whence got yoi 
That apparel so entrancing? — 

O what gardens came you through, 
Butterflies? 
Golden, pollen-tousled lovers 

Of the corn-hearts and the sun ! — 
Lilac-petalled tribe, that hovers 

Near the skies from whence it won 
Shimmer of the light that covers 
Fields afar when day is done ! — 
Butterflies, 
Hither — crimson-cheeked — O wander 

From the happy lands afar, 
Down the rainbow pathway yonder 

Where the clouds of water are ! 
Haste — the showers of pollen squander, — 
Scatter rains from stalk and star, — 
Butterflies ! 



[ 32 ] 



ON LAKE TRASIMENO 

COLD gleam the furrow pools with shreds of 
day 

On Trasimeno's marge ; and far away 
The moon o'er Sanguineto's huts is seen — 
The year's first crescent like a crown serene 
Upon the brow of some averted face 
Whose lineaments no mortal eye may trace. 
There unto God the orchard trees lift high 
Their leafless boughs like palsied hands and 

sigh, — 
" We are too old, O winds of winter, spare ! " 
" Too old ! Too old ! " the gray hills' answer- 
ing pray'r; 
" Have we not borne the ploughs of bronze and 

steel — 
Seen proud Etruria fall, — writhed 'neath the 

heel 
Of Hannibal, — and drenched our thirsting loam 
With blood the richest in the veins of Rome? — 
We are too old ! The pigmy despots pass 
Finding our beauty sterile ; — yea, the glass 
Of Time is emptied of its mightiest grains 
And no strong hand to turn it back remains. 
Therefore, your pity! — newly gathering 

year — 
Ask you no springtime, no more harvest 
here ! — " 

[ 33 ] 



But hush, there breathes from where the islands 

he 
Melodious remonstrance in a sigh 
Across the water, — " O beloved shore, 
Art thou so soon forgetful how we bore 
Together here the pulse of ancient Mays — 
When I, poor brother Francis, trod thy ways 
From dear Assisi, whilst the song of birds 
Scourged us with rapture and the southwind's 

words 
Marshalled the brotherhoods of clouds and 

flow'rs 
In white processions through the sunlit hours? 
Hast thou forgotten these, sweet Umbrian 

shore — 
And all our Perfect Joys? Are they no 

more ? " — 
Then silence falls and o'er the hills afar 
Drift incense flakes of blossoms such as are 
At Whitsuntide beneath the evening star. 



[ 34 ] 



THE HILL PEOPLE 

OVER the shoulders of hills where the great 
clouds huddle around us. 
With eyes half averted we gaze out afar on 
the plain 
Where trudges the infinite herd — the low-hung 
heads that confound us — 
Under the rose-dust haze of the canon's limit- 
less chain. 

Herd unreturning that swarms, numberless, 
slumberless, over 
Wastes in the blaze of whose noon not a 
shadow nor respite arrives ; 
Age upon age do they trudge, yet never can 
vision discover 
End to the flock and its range — nor the face 
of the herdsman that drives. 

Far in the cloud-laden hills we are lulled to their 
treading of thunder. 
As under the zenith ablaze they pass without 
signal or word — 
Stay ! — on our throats there's a hand ! — The 
Rancher ! — His brow, O the wonder ! — 
He drives adown through the gorge where his 
white steed rounds up the herd ! 



[ 85 ] 



THE HEART OF THE ROSE 

WHAT are the joys of the rose? — 
The silence of night at the shrine 
Where it lies in a rapture divine ; 
The exquisite moment it knows 

On the breast of a bride ; its last sighs 
On the lips of a poet who dies ; — 
These are the joys of the rose. 

What are the griefs of the rose? 

To lie in the clasp of the dead 

While the tears of a mother are shed ; 
To symbol a passion that goes, 

To fade on bosom unkind; 

To perish unplucked on the wind; — 
These are the griefs of the rose. 



[36] 



DAYBREAK 

WHILE low before the throne of pearl there 
bend 
Acclaiming seraphs in majestic throng, 
And whirlwinds of Laudates without end 
Shake God's far-shining citadels with song ; 

Against the half -veiled lattice of the mom 
A truant cherub peeps across the dark 

And 'neath the straggling clouds and stars out- 
worn, 
Strains his pink ear to list the rising lark. 



[37] 



CHARLES WARREN STODDARD 

THE POET OF THE SOUTH SEAS 
1843-1909 

THINE exile ended, — O beloved seer, — 
Thou turnest homeward to thine isles of 
light, 
Thy reefs of silver, and palmetto height ! 
Yea, down thy vales sonorous thou wouldst hear 
Again the cataracts that white and clear 

Called from young days — oh, with what lov- 
ing might ! — 
That from our arms and this embattled night 
Thou break'st away and leav'st us weeping here. 

Vain the laudation ! — What are crowns and 
praise 
To thee whom Youth anointed on the eyes? 
We have but known the lesser heart of thee 
Whose spirit bloomed in lilies down the ways 
Of Padua ; whose voice perpetual sighs 
On Molokai in tides of melody. 



[ 38] 



LITTLE PATHWAYS 

NOT by the highways and the streets, dear 
friend, 
Where kings and merchants and their minions 

wend, 
But by the Httle pathways let us go 
Lone ways that only humble footsteps know. 
No dawdling feet upon the world's parade 
Made yonder tracks that wind across the glade 
Where slyly from the flooded haunts of men 
Life trickles back into the wilds again. 
See, here anon and there the ways divide 
Some to the brook and some to the pasture side, 
Glancing sweet invitation as they turn 
To draw us with them through the beds of fern. 
For each though lowly in its crude design 
Leads somewhere — somewhere^ mystery benign ; 
And where the trail seems beaten hard and brown 
Perchance the woodsmen turn from out the 

town; 
And where yon slender course but seems to stray 
Some meadow lies or else the secret way 
A timid lover hastens to his sweet. 
Ah, look, another half o'er-grown we meet, 
But still memorial of old travellers. 
'Twas death, perchance, or fault, alas, of hers. 
If now the grass has crept its footprints o'er ; 
Perchance it led to home — a home no more. 

[ 39 ] 



'Tis ours, old friend, to treasure signs like these 
Wherein are written rarer histories 
Than chronicles of kings and empires tell ; 
For on the scrolling of the hill and dell 
Life with a finger delicate and sure 
Sets for our eyes its heart's own signature. 
Soft to these hollow footways steal the leaves 
When autumn turns to threaten; winter heaves 
His warning breath of snowflakes earliest here; 
Each in its little pulse reports the year. 
Here when the golden dulcimers of spring 
Strike to the forest chords' awakening. 
Here are the primal leaf and grasses stirred 
In answer with Amens of brook and bird. 
Thus sweetly intimate with tender moods 
Our pathways greet us from the solitudes ; 
Here from the past such fond reminders flow 
As bid the future its vast claims forego. 
Though by yon paths that by the thicket wind 
The scythe of Time may other harvest find. 
Though Life exult as in its proudest veins 
And Empire course, — where now are mountain 
rains. 



[ 40 ] 



VIGILIA 

STILL let me dream of her, — 
O winds of summer tangling rose and star! 
Night, let your witcheries but minister 
New harmonies to echo her afar ! 

Still let me dream of her, — 

Though e'en at noon Fame's banners white be 
furled ; 
Though joy and laughter cease, — the little purr 

Of cities and the frothing of the world ! 

Though trumpets rend my ears 

With Titan strife of passions, — though the 
hours 
Crush me like chariot wheels, — the gathering 
years 
Beat all earth's weeping on my head in 
show'rs ! — 

Yea, though Life fall away 

Into a shadowy haunt of things that were, — 
Though Night be heaped in chaos on the Day, — 

Still let me dream, — still let me dream of her ! 



[ « ] 



BLACK JOHN'S WAY 

THERE came a Merry-man down the lane 
(Heigh-ho and a Hnkum-laddie) 
And tapped with his bells at the ale-house pane 
Whilst under the hill stole a sail from Spain. 
(Fol-de-rol and a f ol-de-raddy . ) 

Never came sound or a torch to light 

(Heigh-ho and a linkum-laddie) 
Black- John the Papist's house that night ; 
But the dawn heard spurs and the gallop of 
flight — 

(Fol-de-rol and a fol-de-raddy). 

By Saint Cuthbert's Well Nat Tinker dreamed 

(Heigh-ho and a linkum-laddie) 
That a shaven pate 'neath the torches gleamed 
As a bride — Black- John's fair daughter — 
screamed. 

(Fol-de-rol and a fol-de-raddy.) 

There's Spanish gold in the holy well, 

(Heigh-ho and a linkum-laddie) 
There's a Roundhead youth has cursed its 

spell ! — 
There's a cheek like snow at the court of Spain, 
But never a Merry-man down the lane. 

(Fol-de-rol and a fol-de-raddy.) 

[ 42 ] 



WHERE DREAMS GO BY 

OVER the hill there's a roadway turns 
Through the fields of barley, wheat and 
hay; 
The moonlight paves it, the noontide bums. 
The clouds trail over it all the day. 

It is the road where my dreams go by 
O'er velvet thresholds to the dawns ; 

It tells me where the hamlets lie. 

The silver spires, the pasture lawns. 

" Put by," — it signs me, — "your cloak of care, 
And think no more on the old worlds gone ; 

Here are the Hesperides more fair. 
Here lovelier vales than Avalon ! " 



[ 43] 



WORLD RUNES 

HOAR are the cloud-peaks when the day is 
done 
In druid conclave round the mystic sun; 
Night's silver eloquence of star and moon, — 
The tides, the seasons, and the winds in tune, 
Would, were their vast significance not vain, 
Solve the enigma of our joys and pain 
With words majestical as those the trees 
Heave from their breasts unburthened by the 

breeze. 
Ah, 'tis not utterance of theirs at fault ! 
Hath not the earth, and earths that star the 

vault, 
A kindred language ? This the heart of man 
Instinctive fathomed when his race began, 
Though now with soul left fallow, and grown 

cold. 
No more interprets he those voices old. 
Not so when down Cumaea's mountain ways 
The leaves were scattered for the Sybil's gaze ; 
Not when the wizards on the isles of old 
Bartered the fair winds for the Vikings' gold. 
Deem you that secret perished? Nay, though 

worn 
With bearing fruitless message, night and mom 
Old Earth, as one in mortal travail, cries 
For hearts to take her wisdom ere it dies. 

[ 44 ] 



Thus when by night beneath some harvest mooa 
Her vales seem gathered in ecstatic swoon 
Of mystery and sadness ; when the wind 
Trumpets the morning; or the heavens are 

signed 
For battle, — fain again would she essay 
The ancient word that holds our souls at bay ; 
Her lips eternal, anguished, seem to part — 
Ah, is it only silence fills our heart ? 



[ 45 ] 



GETTYSBURG 

WHO sleep at Gettysburg sleep well ; 
A peace beyond the dreams of glory 
Laps them in sunshine where they fell. 
The very winds that croon them tell 

Of hatreds like a drowsy story ; 
Blue look the skies on where they dwell. 

Ah, blanched with peace are Blue and Gray 
Who come to tread these uplands — slowly 

Lest in the merest piece of clay 

That holds a flower or lines the way. 
Some vestige of a heart-pulse holy — 

Some comrade's heart — be stirred to-day. 

But of that myriad host, ah, where 

Are they — the young, the loved, th' un- 
daunted, 
The warring brothers marshalled there, 
Defiance in their seraph air. 

Their eyes with death's white beauty haunted, 
Their hands to do, their souls to dare? 

Hush, song ; among these storied flow'rs. 
These pallid shafts and waving grasses. 

Wake not such little plaint as ours ; 

See with what calmness nature dow'rs 
The silence of these meadow passes 

In chastened sunlight, softened show'rs. 
[ 46] 



Not here their sole memorials — 

But where th' eternal rainbow quivers 

Athwart the rush of waterfalls ; 

By gleam of lakes and canon walls, 

By north and southland swirl of rivers, 

Where eagle wings or bittern calls. 



[ 47 ] 



DiS PLACIDIS 

I PRAY the gods to spare me 
From this dire love of mine 
Whose sorrows rend and tear me, 
Whose joys are poisoned wine! 

Yea, gods, take back your pleasures, 
Take back your gifts divine, 

And from your hearts' own treasures 
Grant peace at last to mine ! 



[ 48] 



ON A NIGHTINGALE AT AMALFI 

THERE'S an old, old tree of the orchard 
hangs over the clifF in the moonlight 
Where now is a nightingale come to sob, and 
sob, to the breeze ; 
All the sorrows of proud, lost worlds seem voiced 
in that desolate bosom. 
With a cry to my heart that has turned from 

the young world over the seas 
To clamor alone of its griefs -^ boyish griefs 
that are naught to these. 

O ye who sang through the ages — poets of 
Araby, Athens, 
And Rome, — were ye deadened to woe, were 
your bosoms so strong, — 
Vast hearts, that ye hearkened this voicing of 
youth and of sacrifice thwarted, 
Of loves into mockery fallen, of shrines where 

no suppliants throng, 
Of empires and cities in briars and ashes, — 
and called it a song ! 



[49] 



FROM AVIGNON TO TARASCON 

FROM Avignon to Tarascon 
Psalms have died away in laughter ; 
Spire, and turret, and donjon 
Echo but some rigadon 

Careless of the Great Hereafter. 
Never more reflects the river 

Tonsured head or plumed one, — 

Pope and monk and prince are gone, 
Troubadour and hearty-liver 

From Avignon to Tarascon. 
Yet to-day the Rhone goes singing 

Quite as though no Papal John 

With his huntsmen's clarion 
Ever set its woodlands ringing ; 

Quite as though no rogue in iron 
Jousted here, nor amazon 

In severity or fun 

Proved half -deaconess, half siren, 
From Avignon to Tarascon. 

Sun and vineyard still betray man — 
Chateau-Neufs red juices run — 
Brigand still is Cupidon 

To many a lass and godless layman 
From Avignon to Tarascon. 

Ah — what rosy sacrileges, 



[60 ] 



Broken vows, we've left upon 

Lips like Jeanne's or Marthe- Yvonne ! 

Floating past the blossom hedges 
From Avignon to Tarascon 1 



[ 51 ] 



ON THE VERANDA 

ON the veranda while the waning moon 
Flooded the vineyards and the glens of 

June, 
We gathered, singing softly in the shade 
The sighful branches of the trellis made. 
The elders listened silent as our song 
Passed from each well-loved melody along : — 
Through sweet plantation tunes, and hymns of 

war, 
And simple glees and ballads loved of yore. 
They sat apart, their thoughts upon the days 
And voices silenced — while the moon's pale rays 
Transformed the orchard to a dreamlike place 
Hung round with light and shadow as with lace. 
And when the youthful chorus wearied grew 
And to the house they pensively withdrew, 
There in the shelter of the silvered vine 
My fingers taking courage stole to thine. 



[ 52] 



ALHAMBRA SONG 

WOULD ST thou be comrade to the rose, 
Yet of the thorns complain ? 
Wouldst pine for rarer pearls than those 
The diver seeks where Aden flows, 
Yet fear to tempt the main? 

See where upon the twilight hills 

Zuleika's lamp awakes; 
There's not a nightingale that thrills 
These vales with song so sweet as fills 

The heart that sings and breaks. 

Yet should thy panting lips refuse 

In love's fond lists to vie 
With nightingale, thou else must choose 
Within yon lamp thyself to lose — 

A moth — and give no sigh. 



[63] 



IN A FRIEND'S GUIDE-BOOK 

A FLOWER of Spain — a yellow rose of Se- 
ville 
That graced of old some gypsey's lustrous 
hair — 
The spoil, I fancy, which the lucky devil 
Bore off in memory of his folly there. 

A flower of Spain some gracious sefiorita 
Has thrown at carnival amid the ball — 

Or bashful token of some Mariquita 

With fan, mantilla, and embroidered shawl. 

A flower of Spain — ah, not his last memento 
Of Moorish gardens seen by honeymoon — 

Left in his guide-book indiscreetly lent to 
Another tourist in the month of June ? — 

A flower of Spain — yes, Time prepares to blot 
it 

To rust and ashes, all its fragrance flown ! — 
'Tis evident the rascal has forgot it — 

But I shall add some others of my own. 



[ 54 ] 



LARGESSES 

WHAT silver largesses are these 
That scatter from the almond trees,- 
O beggars, cease your mirth, and say 
What little bride hath passed the way? 

" 'Tis April, April,"— they replied,— 
" The villagers have hailed as bride, 
Whose silver largess glads us more 
Than all the Autumn's golden store." 



[ 55] 



ON A GATE-STONE AT GRANADA 

HERE stood the little garden where 
Of old when joy was mine, 
Over her cheeks' two roses rare 

Her eyes, — twain stars, — would shine. 
They say her beauty flaunts its flower 
Within the courts of kings afar ; — 
But see how thorns enmesh the bower, 
And never comes a star ! 



[ 56] 



TO 

ED. AND EMMA 



w 



THE CHANOINESSE 

ITH vinaigrette, and purple robe, and 
fan, 

Madame Mathilde would take the morning 
air; 
Adown the formal paths her old sedan 

Goes gravely moving round the bright par- 
terre, 

By gravelled walk and grotto, with their gleam 
Of marble nymph and satyr, row on row ; 

By storied oak, cascade, and glen, that seem 
The shepherd haunts of Boucher and Wat- 
teau. 

Her faithful Jacques and Joseph, as of yore. 
Go drowsing with her chair ; they too can see 

The vision of old days — alas, no more — 
That steals her from her jewelled rosary. 

'Tis fair Versailles she sees, — the masques, the 
plays, 
Pavanes and minuets ; she hears — beguiled — 
The horns of St.-Germain's far hunting-days 
When beauty crowned her, when Great Louis 
smiled. 



[ 59] 



And hark, another horn ! Before her eyes 
There comes her lover scarcely more than boy ; 

She sees him pass in proud and martial guise ; 
Her dry eyes melt, — she weeps o'er Fontenoy. 

Bright days of conquest, — bitter memories 
That break her spirit ! — till the old command 

Lights in her eyes, as down the path she sees 
Her dear cure approaching hat in hand. 



[60 1 



THE UHLAN 

YOUNG Hugo's an Uhlan, 
An Uhlan so -fine; 
His horse is the Kaiser^ 
But Hugo is mine. 

To the cry of the clarion rides he away ; 
'Tis with softest of whispers I make him obey. 

Though sunhght flash bravely from sabre and 

lance, 
I feel that he trembles in meeting my glance. 

But fearless in battle my Hugo can be ; 
As fierce as the f oeman, as tender to me. 

Ay, flutter light pennon away to the strife ; 
On my tiniest finger I balance his life. 

For Hugo's an Uhlan, 

An Uhlan so fine; 
His horse is the Kaiser's, 

But Hugo is mine. 



[61 ] 



PENITENTS 

WHITE fingers tapping on the pane 
Through all the ghostly day^ — 
White faces down the orchard lane 
Where gusts and snowdrifts play, — 

My heart would hear the messages 
Your lips are fain to say! 

We are the myriads whom men 

Have loved from olden time ; 
The spectre train of Magdalen 

Through every age and clime, 
The winds of fate are tossing us 

Before their scorn sublime. 

By times upon the lonely wastes 

Where trail the city lights, 
We taunt the traveller as he hastes 

Across the troubled nights; 

Or 'neath the moon we nestle down 

On some cathedral's heights. 

The mountains know our coming well 

Far pilgrimage to make ; 
The salt seas scourge us with their swell ; 

The winds our wild prayers take ; 

The sunlight and the starlight strive 

Our fevered hearts to slake. 

[62 ] 



Till when upon our calmed souls 

The peace of mountains creeps, 
Our trembling sisterhood unrolls 

Into the valley deeps, 

And clusters 'mong the thatch and vines 

Where some pure maiden sleeps. 

White pilgrims down the orchard lane, — 

See, night comes on apace; 
And one far casement lights the plain 

From my love's dwelling-place. 

Oh, grant her there, when comes the moon/. 

Your silvery embrace. 



[ 63] 



IN MEMORY'S GARDEN 

THERE is a garden in the twilight lands 
Of Memory, where troops of butterflies 
Flutter adown the cypress paths, and bands 
Of flowers mysterious droop their drowsy eyes. 

There through the silken hush come footfalls 
faint 
And hurried through the vague parterres ; and 
sighs, 
Whispering of rapture or of sweet complaint 
Like ceaseless parle of bees and butterflies. 

And by one lonely pathway steal I soon 
To find the flowerings of the old delight 

Our hearts together knew — when lo, the moon 
Turns all the cypress alleys into white. 



[ 64] 



SONGS 

WOULD God, some little song might come 
To hearts of men, as in the spring 
The birds confide to branches numb 

At April's earliest blossoming ! 
Till lips, like stone no longer dumb, 

With life's melodious floods might ring — 
Would God, the song might come ! — 

But gone is boyhood from the heart ; 

For all the bright dream-army fades — 
The knights, the troubadours depart — 

The shepherd swains, the lily maids. 
Ah, minstrel, — where thine oldtime art 

To flood with tender serenades 

The windows of the heart ! 

Hark ! through earth's cities runs a cry 

Proclaiming new appointed days 
Of beauty — Hark ! — " Old hates shall die 

And craft shall yield the soul's due praise, 
The High Fates put their terrors by — 

And man walk chainless on Life's way ! " 
Song ! Song, — take up that cry ! 



[65] 



STAR-TRYSTS 

THE pool of the lilies yearns and sighs 
All night long for its starry skies ; 
The skies look down through the lily floats 
And pine all day for their ivory throats. 

Winds of the morning clarion far 

Their taunt at the heels of each laggard star ; 

There is flit of wings where the boughs hang 

over, — 
Arrows of sunlight breath of clover. 

But ah ! when the twilight beetle goes 

With droning whir o'er the sleepy rose. 

There comes one perfect hour of peace 

When skies, and waters, find surcease; 

When the lotes grow fond to the day's embrace 

And the stars bend down o'er the pool's wan 

face ; — 
One perfect hour ere night comes on, 
And day from his lily loves is gone ; — 
One perfect hour, ere the moon recalls 
The loitering stars to her silver halls. 



[ 66} 



IN THE TWILIGHT OF LOVE 

IF years ago you told me, dear, 
That on a day our dreams would fade 
To these half-hearted fancies drear, 

I should have grieved and felt dismayed. 

But yet so softly has the rain 
Of dead years' ashes settled on 

Each passion- jewel that the pain 
Is smothered ere all light has gone. 

Ah, be it thus with love's decease ! — 
Its day is done ; its shrine, too high 

To brave Time's destined tragedies; 
Let us steal down ere night comes by. 



[ 67 ] 



THE VOICE 

OVER the fields and the sea 
To where on the hill I was sleeping 
There whispered a Voice unto me, — 

" Arise ! " and I caught the sun creeping 
In under the door of the room, 

And my eyes still sore from old weeping 
Looked up, and saw 'twas a tomb. 

Then I remembered it all ; — 

The hush of loved voices ; the token 

Of roses ; the tears you let fall ; 

The sobs half smothered and broken. 

Ah, long did it seem since my breast. 
With the farewells only half spoken, 

Had heaved its last sigh into rest. 

In dust fell the wreath from my head 

As I broke through the cobwebs that bound 
me. 

Still, still the Voice Beautiful said, — 
" Arise ! " and I felt all around me. 

Till on the mildewy floor 

Standing atremble I found me, 

And softly I opened the door. 



[ 68] 



oh, the vast surge of the light, 

And the warmth, and earth-gladness! The 
singing 
Of birds through the blossom-drifts white, 

And the far bells' silvery ringing! 
All my strange robe, as I stood 

In the sunlight, grew pure ; the lark winging 
Shook music o'er pasture and wood ! 

Out on the glittering lands 

A great white army went slowly 
With branches of palm in their hands 

Mid the silence seraphic and holy; 
Went over smooth fields near the sea 

Whence that Voice came murmuring lowly, — 
" Arise and come unto me ! " 

Rapturous thrill of those words ! 

As I felt all their meaning awaken. 
My heart leaped up with the bird's, — 

All thoughts of old sorrows forsaken ! 
Out o'er the fields and the sea 

I stole till the throng was o'ertaken — 
And sighed, " Unto Thee ! Unto Thee ! " 



[69] 



THE HAIL 

THERE is an army marching 
Across the straining roof; 
And roused from sleep I hear the sweep 
Of sabre, drum, and hoof. 

And every chattering window 

Is trembhng as in fear 
While on the blast the horde goes past 

And leaves the storm-path clear. 



[ TO] 



DREAM ELOQUENCE 

IN dreams of thee I feel the eloquence 
That floods the souls of poets half divine ; 
Earth blooms anew ; and music takes a sense 
Of glorious pain ; and thought gives warmth 
Uke wine. 

Oh, to give this to language ! To distil 
With wizardry this heavenly vapor fleet ! 

And in a word, a gem, a flower, at will. 
Cast all my trembling passion at your feet ! 



f •" ] 



A SIGH FROM ALHAMBRA 

THY beauty's orchard in decay ! — 
Thy soul an exile on the wind ! — 
Thy cheek's fond jewel in the clay 

With Death's imperial signet signed ! — 

Lo, by the pathway where they bore 
Thy form unto its cypress urn, 

The rose droops earthward more, and more, 
As though to hearken thy return I 



[72] 



IN THE HOUSE OF AUGUSTUS 

COM'ST thou to greet me at the Forum gate 
Where dwelt Octavian, earliest star of 
night, — 
Leaving thy little vales and pools of light, 
Thy paths of home whereon I saw thee late? 
Sweet is thine oldtime message here, where fate 
O'erwhelmed man's haughtiest eminence with 

blight,— 
To tell this crumbling beauty of a night 
Which hath survived all despots and all state. 

Here 'mid this wrack of broken arch and 
shrine, — 

Rienzi's haunt, — Farnese's hills of pine, — 
Where 'neath Time's very brow, the Goths 
our sires 

Entombed slave-empire, — here, thy purer rays 

Bespeak, O childhood's star ! — Christ's prom- 
ised days. 
The lamps of peace, the hearths' untainted 
fires. 



[T3] 



TO 

MARIE-LOUISE 

AND 

ARCHER VANCE PANCOAST 



IN THE CLOISTER OF SAN JUAN 

MOONLIGHT haunts the Httle garden 
Of the cloister of San-Juan 
Where the Novice Serafita — 

She so fair to look upon — 
Steals adown the fragrant passes 

Near the fountains murmuring low 
While the misty harbor slumbers 

And the stars and lamplights glow. 
In that garden on the hillside 

There are roses to enslave 
Poets' hearts with dreams of beauty 

To the threshold of the grave; 
Shrines of Virgins are reflected 

In the founts that never cease 
And the night wind in the trellis 

Whispers orisons for peace. 
Gently there the youthful novice 

In her cloister robe of white 
Bends to whisper to the roses 

Dripping with the dews of night ; — 
" Are you weeping, little sisters ? 

Is there sorrow in your breast 
At this hour so calm and saintly 

When the weary-hearted rest? " 
And they answer in the moonlight 

For their souls were all her own 
Since they blossomed in her kisses 

[ 77 ] 



And had felt her hand alone : — 
" We are weeping, Serafita, 

O'er the sorrows of the rose." — 
— " Nay, beloved," — she makes answer, — 

" Are your blossoms not of those 
That alone upon the altar 

Through the silent night repose, — 
All your hearts in love consuming 

At the threshold of your Lord? " 
But they whisper, softly weeping, 

— " Few there be for such award." — 
— " Nay," she pleads, — ^" if earth so claim you, 
Be the tokens that enshrine 
Love in throthed maidens' bosoms 

In avowal half divine." 
Then they answer, " Serafita, 

Nor for them our petals weep, 
Who upon the day they blossom 

At the feet of Jesu sleep ; 
Nor for them, our gentle sisters 

Who on maiden hearts find grace 
There to breathe out all their being 

In love's sacrificial place; 
But our tears are falling, falling, 

For the roses that must lie 
All the perfect night on bosoms 

Whence they hearken base reply, — 
Lain on hearts grown deaf and heedless 

To the plea that roses make, — 

[ 78 ] 



Roses but decoys to kisses 

That are poisoned like the snake. 
These have filled our hearts with sorrow, 

Most of all, the dumb despair 
Of the rose upon a bosom 

Set for love that is not there." 
Then — so runs the simple legend — 

There came fear within the eyes 
Of the Novice Serafita 

As she listened to their sighs, 
Bent and wept upon their petals — 

And with prayer her lips upon — 
Hastened through the silver moonhght 

In the cloister of San Juan. 



[ 19 1 



THE LEVANTINE 

FROM off her back she swings the satchels 
down 
And spreads her wares. Her hands tattooed 

proclaim 
In arabesque her tribe and creed and name, — 
The swarthy peddlar through our inland town. 
With sharp eyes watching for a smile or frown, 
Across the worlds of time and space she came, 
Relaxing never from her ancient aim, — 
Here where the blue-eyed urchins pluck her 
gown. 

What of her youth and gladness ? — on what 
shore 
Levantine, — on what height of Lebanon, 
Rove the lithe kinsmen of her Biblic race.'' 
Those eyes, perchance, Stamboul hath doted-on. 
Or Smyrna's alleys praised — ere, to our door 
She trudged the farmlands with her beads 
and lace. 



[ 80 ] 



AFTERGLOW 

OVER the orchard one great star; 
The yellow moon ; — and the harvest 
done; 
And the cheek of the river crimsoned far 
From the kiss of the vanished sun. 



[81] 



THE HOURS 

AWAKE, — the misty waters hear 
Across the hills the chanticleer 
Proclaim his ancient warning ! 
The cloud-heaped harbors of the east 
Unfurl as for a bannered feast 
The crimson sails of morning. 

Twelve galleons of mauve and red 
And liquid gold and at their head 

The daj-star gleaming o'er them, 
From out their offing-bar advance 
With breasting sheets and crystal dance 

Of rainbow sprays before them. 

And lo ! — the opal'd waters raise 

The waves' white brows to swell their praise 

Along the paths they follow; 
While all the hills and strands are stirred 
With low of kine and song of bird, 

With flight of cloud and swallow. 

Twelve argosies ye be that go 

With freights of joys, and pains, and woe, 

By ways where none may linger; 
The day-star fades upon your mast. 
Your sails of ruby meet at last 

The noontide's jealous finger. 

[ 82 ] 



The breath that drives you o'er the skies 
Knows never lapse, nor ever dies; 

Your pilot's eye ne'er closes ; 
From morning star to evening star 
Fate speeds you on his paths afar 

From dawn's to sunset's roses. 

Then as through Night's black gulfs you swing, 

O what a motley harvesting 

Your weary hulks go bearing ! — 
What wharfage waits their strange discharge — 
Or in the void doth every barge 

Sink in one swirl despairing? 

Upon the hills we crouch all night 
And ply our God with question trite, 

Where sail those fleets of morning? 
Till swift again across the world 
New silver halliards are unfurled 

And chanticleer is warning. 



[83 ] 



RUSSIAN SPRINGSONG AFTER 
MINAIEV 

SHE softly droops her maiden eyes 
Behind the casement ledge at home, 
And ever and anon she sighs, — 

" Ah, if the spring would only come ! " 

Another on his bed of pain 

With hope of health and sunshine near. 
Warms his faint heart with like refrain, — 

" Ah, if the spring were only here ! " 

And soon the spring with flower and dove 
Brings each a portion on its breath : — 

For her, sweet blossomings and love ; 
For him, sweet blossomings and death. 



[ 84] 



ON THE PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ROME 

SUNLIGHT and starlight find them still the 
same, 

Still crowd the strange years by ; each carven 
name 

Grows dimmer on the marble balustrade 

That winds unto the Pincian with its shade 

Of cypress and of ilex, file on file, 

Beyond the cross-crowned needle from the Nile. 

Ne'er come the winds and rains as strangers here 

Where Keats' great soul went forth; the lant- 
erns peer 

By twilights opaline as those he knew ; 

The low-voiced fountain sobs its midnights 
through. 

New popes, new princes, hail with old array 

The saints and triumphs granted for to-day ; 

New flowers are bartered-f or beneath the sun ; 

New dreamers come to sigh o'er days undone. 

Proud Rome, — they took the garlands of your 
tombs 

To drape their ploughshares, to inspire their 
looms ; 

They lit their furnace at your altar fires ; 

And scoured the seas and sped their glistening 
tires 

Through worlds you knew not; yet unsatisfied 



[85 ] 



They come — Gaul, Teuton, Anglian, in their 

pride — 
To wrest the fuller message from your glooms, 
The word of life, — their ear against your 

tombs. 



[ 86] 



MATINS 

WHEN in your heart the song seems ended 
And life and laughter no more keep tune 
With the lilt of the waters and day seems blended 
With shadows that stray from some ghostly 

moon, — 
Faint heart, remember the month of June. 

Then the southwind whispers the trees, " O 
brothers, 
Awake and array ye for the feast ! " 
And the lambkins bleat, " It is dawn, dear 
mothers ! " 
And the tulips hailing the sun as priest 
Lift up their chalices to the east. 

Yea, and each leaf like a cymbal beating 
Proclaims its paean by hill and glen, 

Laudate Dominum repeating. — 

And you, faint heart, what sing you then 
As the brooks and the birds respond Amen ? 



[87] 



GROVER CLEVELAND 

NO surge fanatical, no tide of greed 
Raised him to grasp our destinies supreme ; 
Nor battering mob, nor plutocrat's foul 
scheme 
Held back his hand from its appointed deed 
Of righteousness ; nor doth chicane succeed 
To smirch his laurels — though no foolish 

gleam 
Theatric plays around his brows that seem 
Set like Gibraltar so the world may heed. 

Lo, vistaed down the morning peaks of Time, 
Not flushed with youth nor with th' exultant 
crest 
Of pioneer or combatant, he stands ! 
Exemplar to our manhood in its prime — 
Of all true citizens acclaim as best. 

The clean, ripe mind, the lawful heart and 
hands. 



[ 88] 



WITH THE SHEPHERDS ON THE HH^LS 

BESIDE its weary mother the lamb began 
to bleat: — 
" Mother, mother, hearken to the voices strange 

and sweet ! " 
(The old ewe slumbered deeply; the winds and 
clouds were fleet.) 

" O mother look and tell me what forms are 

these in flight 
Across the hills and valleys — what floating 

eyes of light ? " 
("Hush, you are dreaming, — the mists are 

thick to-night.") 

" But mother, mother, listen, — they are whis- 
pering again 

That Christ, a Lord and Savior, is born this 
night to men 

In David's holy city adown our pasture glen — 

" And see, — like drifting fleeces through the 

midnight air they wing — " 
("Wake me not, little one, mine eyes see not 

a thing.") 
" Oh hearken, hearken, mother, — a Gloria they 

sing! 



[89] 



" And see, the skies are clearing, a star is gleam- 
ing down 

Awake and follow, mother, for amid the shadows 
brown 

The shepherds bear me with them on the path 
to Bethlehem Town." 



[90 ] 



NO SPRING TILL NOW 

NO spring till now, — though in its hushing 
voices 
The garden warned me of the year's decline ; 
" Not here," they said, " the springtime of thy 
choice is ; " 
And in the falling star I read the sign. 

The long night through I followed at its warn- 
ing? 
And now — the mocking fires and pitfalls 
passed — 
Footsore and faint I wait the soul's white morn- 
ing 
Upon the threshold of the spring at last. 

No spring till now! — O heart, stay yet thy 
gladness, 
Ere yet thou leav'st the crags and marshes 
drear 
Where thou hast won thy way in toil and sad- 
ness. 
One last farewell — turn thou and bless them 
here. 



[ 91 ] 



Yea. Hope supernal o'er my brow uncloses 
The golden vials of a perfect day; 

And see, my gaping wounds all turned to 
roses, — 
My soul, a lark that wings upon its way I 



[ 92 ] 



A GARDEN PRAYER 

THAT we were earthlings and on earth must 
live 
Thou knewest, Allah, and did'st grant us 
bread ; 
Yea, — and remembering of our souls — did'st 
give 
Us food of flowers ; — Thy name be hal- 
lowed ! 



[93 ] 



TO 
JOHN J. DONLAN 

FRIEND AND REVEREND 



THE NOEL OF ST. ELOI 

THEN you have seen the Wise-Kings 
pass, — 
My children, answer me; 
Quick, sit you down and rest, alas. 
How tired your feet must be I 

O mother, we did climb the hill, 

Yet it was all in vain; 
For though we ran their banners still 

Lay out beyond the plain ; 
Their steeds went galloping afar 
Beneath the wintry evening star 

With golden crest and rein. 

Could you not see their holy eyes. 

The sacred gifts they bore? 
Their magic wands of wondrous size. 

Their boohs of hidden lore? 

We hurried down the orchard-side 

Though darkness had begun ; 
Beyond the woods we saw them ride 

On clouds across the sun ; 
And then they vanished in the west 
Just where the sun sinks down to rest 

And stars came^ one by one. 



[97] 



Alas! then you did miss them so? — 

/ saw them pass the hill 
And straightway to the chapel go, — 

We there shall find them still. 

And shall we see their faces there, — » 
Each King with robes and crown? 

Quick, mother dear, the meal prepare 
And let us hasten down ; 

For hark, the parish bells we hear 

Ring down the valley sweet and clear 
To welcome them to town ! 



[98 ] 



NIGHT IN THE SUBURBS 

PEACE after fevered hours ; 
No more 
The clatter of streets and harbor roar ; 
Only some wind-swept tree 
Recalls the jostle and anxiety, 
Only some drowsy hill, the city's surging towers. 
Night, be thou mindful of thy sacred bond ! 
Come not as when thy reign 
Shook fen and hill beyond 
Man's outposts with the roaring 
Of beasts in rage and pain: 
But turn thine eyes, imploring 
The boon of sleep 
Upon these garden eaves, and keep 
Thy faithful tryst and pure. 
Here where calm mothers rest 
Enriched with loving turmoils of the nest ; 
Here where man's dreams endure. 
And stalwarth arms in sleep 
Reach toward the heights of steel and granite 

strewn 
In proud up-tumble, 

Where bridges swing to heaven above the rumble 
Of star-fed bees 

That float amid the wonder of the moon 
On merchant embassies. 
Dreams glorious such as these 

[ 99 ] 



The sculptor knows upon his work-shop bed 
Beneath the marble where he would fulfill 
Some final loveliness — which still 
Dawn sees unfinished. 



[100] 



RAVELLO 

LORDS of Ravello — men of craft and 
might 
Whose bones are dust in scattered tombs to- 
night 

Along Amalfi's splendor-haunted coast 

Warriors, bishops, merchants — turbulent hosts 
So stiff and stark on many a carven shrine 
At Scala and Atrani ; Angevine, 
Lombard and Norman, ye who sound no more 
For war or revel round Salerno's shore, — 
Come ye not ghostly back at hours like these 
To high Ravello, whose proud mysteries 
Of crag and valley ye can solve alone ? — 
Castles and ports deserted — towers o'erthrown 
Where once ye held you strong 'gainst storm 

and foe — 
Nameless — agape to all the winds that blow? — 
From far below, the fisher-town appear, 
Chants as ye fashioned in the ages when 
With Sicily ye crushed the Saracen. 
And ere the plaints are done, some ancient bell 
Among the valley domes awakes to tell 
Once more the story of the fragrant years : — 
How erst by that steep footway, where one 

hears 
Now but the fountain's drip, there rose the 
clash 

[ 101 ] 



Of battle-axe, and falchion, and the flash 
Of Pisan steel against the Norman shields. 
As flamed the bolted gates, the ravaged fields : — 
How once rang battle-cries from town to town 
Round holy Trophimena's bones dragged down 
From out Minori's shrine by pirate bands 
That sought the relics for their unblest lands. 
Nay, 'tis no moon that silvers all your shore, 
Lords of Ravello, where your feasts are o'er, 
But gleam of jewelled goblets that ye cast 
Upon the deeps as cup on cup was passed. 
For here ye kissed, and poniarded, and played ; 
Troths plighted; yea, and sleeping friends be- 
trayed ! — 
Fair were the shrines ye reared, ere summoned 

hence — 
D'Afflitto, — Ruf olo, — in penitence ! 
Fallen — fallen Amalfi ! Gone her Doges' days 
Of pageantry ! None but the dreamer stays 
To trace, — Ravello, — in thy roofless holds 
The names, the glories, that the moss enfolds. 
Yet no such breath of lemon groves, — no skies 
Of purple, — fold your haughty kin that lies 
Afar in Naples, where the mass-bells swing 
And choristers' and peddlars' outcries ring 
Through the alley mazes. For their full repose 
Not even avails the sanctuary close — 
Where, scorn of their own pauper off'spring's 
feet, 

[ 102 ] 



Thej frown in stone, — while bells and censers 

greet 
God's very Self called earthward o'er and o'er, 
And many crouch in fear and few adore. 



[103] 



SEVILLANA 

SUN in the darkening west, 
Wouldst thou vie with the damask flower 
In her raven hair at rest? 

Pale moon of the twilight hour, — 
Like mine hath thy cheek confest 
Dolores^ lovely pow'r. — " 

Hush, music — her whisper is heard 
At the lattice ; I bend o'er her hand 

Which flutters in mine like a bird. 

As the wave to the shell on the strand, 

My soul is outpoured in a word 

That her ear is not fain to withstand. 

Up from the alley-way steals 

The cohhler*s rap-a-tap song: — 
" Ha, ha! for the lover who feels 

Both his heart and shoe-leather so strong 
That theyll never wear down at the heels — 

Ha, ha! but lovers journeys are long! " 

On streams the night; there is breath 
Of the tangerines over the walls. 

" Forever — thine only," she saith. 
As soft from the belfry there falls 

The stroke of The Souls — sighing, " Death — 
Death — and the loves it recalls ! " 

[ 104< 1 



Peace to you, souls of the past — 
Lovers whose yearnings are o'er ! — 

Yea, bid the loveless sleep fast, 

White moon, with thy seal to their door ! 

But O my Dolores ! — at last 

Thy lips — upon mine — evermore ! — 



[ 105 ] 



TO FRANCIS THOMSON 

AS lightning o'er some village feast of 
lamps, 
Thy spirit still flashed across these little 

times 
Of babbling sages and ear-cozening rhymes. 
The storm comes on! Lo, what new pallor 

stamps 
The brows that with thee held the high-pitched 
camps 
Of beauty 'gainst the horde from out the 

slimes 
Of Greed and Hate, who clutch the heaven-set 
chimes 
To drag them jangling down the fens and 
damps ! 

For thou art gone — thy " stammer of the 

skies " 
Resolved to ultimate song! The white gleam 
lies 
Along the dismal streets thy feet have passed, 
And shame burns hot on cheeks thou erst 
found cold. 
Thy giant soul hath Pindar claimed at last; 
Thee to his breast Assisi's son doth fold. 



[ 106] 



THE CATHEDRAL, BURGOS, 1905 

HIGH in their groves of stone the ancient 
bells intone.) 
Hosannas fling we on the midnight air ! 

For tongues of silver, lips of brass are ours, 
And far to sing their gladness and their care 
Men hung us here amid these carven bow'rs, — 
In excelsis Gloria! 

(Then pulse with joyous tone the Spires in uni- 
son.) 
We that are earth's last flowering up to God 
Lift to the stars the gladness of the land ! 
(The Gargoyles mouth and leer from every 

ledge and pier. ) 
We for earth's outcasts witness ; in the sod 
Both worm and flower are equal in His 
hand, — 

In excelsis Gloria! 

(Hark, the Foundation-Stone heaves forth its 

joy alone.) 
Brother to that bare stone of Bethlehem 

Whereon His earliest pillow was, — am I! — 
Let the glad chimes remember that for them 
My shoulders prop their eyries in the sky — 
In excelsis Gloria! 



[ 107 ] 



(Then from the Organs pour the canticles of 

yore.) 
To God in utmost heaven let proud acclaim 

Of Glory, Love, and Sovereignty resound ! — 
O that the winds which over Bethlehem came 
Were in our throats to make His praise 
abound — 

In excelsis Gloria! 

(And as their chants arise the Baptistery sighs.) 
O Bethlehem in me each day renewed ! — 
(The Crypt where deep are stored monarch, and 
saint, and lord.) 
Hosanna from the Manger of the Dead ! 
(The Altar-Tapers fair bum out their souls in 

prayer. ) 
There was a star upon that solitude 

Wherefrom was Perfect Light on Juda 
shed, — 

In excelsis Gloria! 

(Then all the Townsfolk cry in one clear song 

on high.) 
Flesh of our flesh — unto the earth He came ; 

Soul of His soul — to win us home again ! 
Our souls and bodies worshipping proclaim 
The Christ in us reborn this night to men — 
In excelsis Gloria! 
Et in terra Pax! 

[ 108 1 



THE TARDY SPRING 

UNTIL the spring — until the breath of 
May, 
She meekly craved her Lord that she might stay. 

" Yea, till the spring," — He whispered her 

apart, — 
" Until the May, thou gentle, trusting heart." 

But bleak and tardy crept the days along ; 
There came no bloom for her, no flit of song, — 

And at the last she sighed, — " The flowers de- 
lay — 
Perchance they wait to meet me on my way — " 

She died — at morn we threw her windows 

wide — 
Anemones filled all the garden side. 



[ 109] 



THE POOL OF THE HAZELS 

WHERE bend the hazels' ancient boughs 
above, 
I linger by the mountain pool and dream ; 
The branches whisper names and runes I love, 
The waters eye me with reproachful gleam. 
For here the footsteps of old kings have been, 

And in the depths their glittering baubles lie ; 
Their crowns, their torques, their silver wands, 
are seen, 
With drowsy salmon softly brushing by. 

And as I muse the hazel nuts drop down 

Below the shadowed surface with a gasp; 
But when my arm would seize a sword or 
crown, — 

Ah, see, the ripples hide it from my grasp. 
And once again the nightwind at my ears 

Is whispering, '' Dreamer, vain is all your 
toil! 
Leave if you will your little meed of tears. 

But from the Pool of Sorrows take no spoil." 



[ "0 ] 



NOEL OF STE. ANNE DE CHICOUTIMI, 
QUEBEC 

4 4 TTyRIEND Jeanne-Marie, His the holy 

X night. 
Thy cloak 'put on, thy lantern light,** 

(Hark to the joyous carillon!) 
" Therese, no childless wife can say 
Fit prayers to-night ; go thou and pray." 

(The bells ring Noel, Noel.) 
" Nay, Jeanne-Marie, at the chapel door 
Thou canst kneel till the mass is o*er, 

(Hark to the solemn carillon !) 
While I go up to the Crib and make 
Bon-Jesu homage for thy sake," 

(The bells ring Noel, Noel.) 
Frosty stars from the sky look down ; 
Lanterns pass to the hillside town ; 

(Hark to the holy carillon !) 
And there they see 'mid the lights and awe 
The waxen Infant on the straw. 

(The bells ring Noel, Noel.) 
" Rise up, rise up, good Jeanne-Marie, 
The mass is over; come with me,** 

(Hark to the noisy carillon !) 
" Therese, Therese, — old neighbor dear, — 
I must have slept, — He — He came here." 

(The bells ring Noel, Noel.) 
" Kush^ Jeaime-Marie, and come away; 

[ 111 ] 



The church is cold, — 'tTmll soon be day. 

(Hark to the dying carillon!) 
" Yes, in my sleep, Therese, I saw 
The Infant-Jesu leave the straw, 

(The bells ring Noel, Noel.) 
And come and lay His forehead blest 
Here, Therese, on my childless breast, 

(Hark to the merry carillon !) 
And then I heard the children sing 
The glad Adeste to their King." 

(The bells ring Noel, Noel.) 
" Jeanne-Marie, another year 
Thyself mayst to the Crib draw near,*' 

(Hark to the echoing carillon!) 
"Pray God, Therese, that I may there 
Among the mothers make my prayer." 

(The bells ring Noel, Noel.) 



[ 112] 



A PANEL AFTER TURNER 

THE peacock on the balustrade 
Of ambered marble sleeps away ; 
His feathered train's begemmed array 
Sweeping the poppies in cascade. 

The fountain Triton flings about 
His spray amid the tawny sun 
Where shines a lithe chameleon 

Like tinsel, basking noontide out. 

While weary of the perfumed air 
The butterfly, a white Pierrot — 

Droops o'er the jasmine pulsing slow 
His petaled wings of opal rare. 

They dream — Afar, see, tumbling high, 
The storm's gray chaos ! Its decrees 
The enpurpled plumage of the trees 

Proclaims, " Faint rose, the rain is nigh.'* 



[ 113 ] 



TO AN ENGLISH SETTER 

CORINTHIAN of dogs, how word the 
grace 
That guides your movements? How portray 

your face, — 
The meditation of your eyes, your pose 
Of royal head? Such were great Landseer's 

joys 
Who in your woodland splendor lithe and frank 
Found your race Greek from chest to slender 

flank 
And gave you poetry for heritage. 
Would that in his — your high breed's classic 

age — 
He could have seen and caught the charm again 
Of sunlight rippling through your silken mane 
Of white and gold! Would he could see you 

now 
Cleaving the goldenrod like Dian's plough 
And quick with autumn's half barbaric mood 
Scattering the sumac leaves in showers of blood ! 
Or as, in carved Olympiad runners' pose. 
With ears peaked high you watch the cloud of 

crows 
Flock with sarcastic echoes o'er the plain, 
Knowing pursuit and challenge are in vain. 



[ "4 ] 



HOW LIKE THE ROSE 

HOW like the rose to bloom a day 
And leave but memory behind 
Of where among the thorns she twined, 
Frail visitant who might not stay ! 
What godhead grants the thorns delay 
— To riot in their native clay 
While beauty passes on the wind, 
How like the rose! 

Ah. whither must she thus away 
Whose embassy hath been so kind 
That Love no other voice would find 

Than hers to warn our hearts and say, 
How like the rose! 



[115] 



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